The present invention relates to containers for the storage and transportation of office records, particularly papers.
An immense volume of paper records is generated annually by the work of various office groups. Correspondingly, a large fraction of this volume of paper work must be shipped off to storage, or shipped from one office to another. Moreover, many offices find it convenient to maintain little-used records in bulk storage within the office, where those records can be accessed if needed. For all of these purposes, cardboard boxes are commonly used.
A commonly used type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,667,666 (which is hereby incorporated by reference), and is marketed by the Perma Product Company of Dallas, Tex. This design provides a cardboard box, which is cheap and sturdy. This box design has the advantages that:
1. Empty boxes can be sold folded flat. The user can easily fold the empty boxes into their usable form.
2. These boxes have a reasonably useful volume, typically in the neighborhood of a cubic foot. Thus, when these boxes are filled full of papers, their total weight will be in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 pounds. The construction of the boxes is strong enough to handle such weights reliably, without any risk of the boxes giving way in normal service.
3. The boxes have handle holes near the two ends. These handle holes permit the users to grab hold of the boxes and easily shift them around. These handle holes are too small to pose substantial risk of the contents escaping, and have the advantage that no external hardware is present, so that filled boxes can be stacked next to each other.
4. After a box has been filled, the lid fits over and around the top of the box body. Thus, closing the box does not require any flaps to intrude into the storage area. This makes it easier to close the boxes rapidly, and also minimizes the risk of the papers being disarranged by the closing operation. The use of a box with strong sidewalls and flat lids means that filled boxes can readily be stacked on top of each other.
Boxes of this type, while widely used, are not totally adequate, in that there is no simple, reliable means for securing the lid to the box for transport, or for prevention of pilferage and accidental loss.
When using this conventional design, after a box has been filled and its lid placed on it, users will normally tape down the lid when the box is to be shipped. However, to provide secure closure (so that the box will not open and spill papers during transport), a significant amount of adhesive tape must be used, even if the tape being used is quite strong. Moreover, in relation to the other operations described, the operation of thoroughly taping down the box lid is relatively slow.
As a structural material, cardboard has important advantages and important disadvantages. Cardboard is very cheap and lightweight, but its strength is quite directional: with normal corrugated cardboard, the in-plane shear strength will be quite strong in one direction, and not quite so strong in the orthogonal direction. Similarly, a sheet of such cardboard will bend quite easily along one axis, but not as easily along the opposite axis. These anisotropic characteristics can be overcome by using two-ply corrugated cardboard, but such cardboard is more expensive and not as lightweight. The present invention provides a secure and readily-accessible document handling container which efficiently exploits the strengths of cardboard structures, to provide a container which can easily hold several dozen of times its own weight. Thus, for document storage boxes, cardboard has the potential to be nearly an ideal material, if its disadvantages can be overcome. The teachings of the present invention can alternatively be applied to container designs which use other materials to reinforce a structure which is predominantly cardboard, or to designs which use lightweight honeycombed materials other than cardboard.
The present invention provides a modified cardboard document-handling box, and an improved method for closing such boxes. According to the present invention, the design described is modified by including a hole in the lid of the box, in a position such that the hole will be located above the handle holes when the lid is in place. After the lid is in place, a cable tie is threaded through the hole the handle hole, to securely attach the lid to the box. Preferably the hole is reinforced by a grommet (of metal or other material) to avoid tearout, but alternatively other reinforcements (such as a fiber or composite disk) could be used. Alternatively, depending on the strength of the material used for the lid, a simple hole could be used instead.
Cable ties are a convenient fastener which is cheap and readily available, and is very widely used in electrical assembly. Cable ties are normally formed of nylon, and have a high breaking strength for their size. (For example, cable ties have actually been used as temporary handcuffs by some police departments.) The cable tie has a series of angled steps along a large part of the length of the tie, and which has a formed structure with complementary angled steps at the other end. Thus, these two sections of angled steps form a pawl and ratchet structure, and, by inserting the free end of the cable tie into the formed end of the cable tie, the cable tie can be tightened so that it tightly fits the desired size.
Cable ties come in two types: reusable and non-reuseable. In the reusable, the user can manipulate the cable tie ends to disengage the pawl and ratchet mechanism, and loosen the tie. In the non-reusable type, there is no such disengagement mechanism, so that the cable tie, once it has been tightened, must be cut to remove it.
Thus, the present invention uses cable ties, which are a commonly available industrial part, to improve the capabilities of document storage boxes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,331,257 to Taschner, which is hereby incorporated by reference, teaches the use of cable ties to prevent a mechanical latch on a medical instrument box from opening accidentally. The box's lid is held closed by the latch, not by the cable tie itself.
Thus, the present invention enables document boxes to be rapidly closed, securely transported, and rapidly opened.
Moreover, a further advantage of the present invention is that, after a box has been used for shipping or storage and is reopened, the sides of the box are not cluttered with tape. Thus, the box can still be used for "neat" storage.